Cyrus McCormick

Cyrus McCormick, in full Cyrus Hall McCormick, (born February 15, 1809, Rockbridge county, Virginia, U.S.—died May 13, 1884, Chicago, Illinois), American industrialist and inventor who is generally credited with the development (from 1831) of the mechanical reaper.

McCormick was the eldest son of Robert McCormick—a farmer, blacksmith, and inventor. McCormick’s education, in local schools, was limited. Reserved, determined, and serious-minded, he spent all of his time in his father’s workshop.

The elder McCormick had invented several practical farm implements but, like other inventors in the United States and England, had failed in his attempt to build a successful reaping machine. In 1831 Cyrus, aged 22, tried his hand at building a reaper. Resembling a two-wheeled, horse-drawn chariot, the machine consisted of a vibrating cutting blade, a reel to bring the grain within its reach, and a platform to receive the falling grain. The reaper embodied the principles essential to all subsequent grain-cutting machines.

McCormick reaperThe original McCormick reaper, 1831.Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

For farmers in the early 19th century, harvesting required a large number of labourers, and, if they could be found, the cost of hiring them was high. When McCormick’s reaper was tested on a neighbour’s farm in 1831, it offered the hope that the yield of the farmer’s fields would soon not be limited to the amount of labour available. The machine had defects, not the least of which was a clatter so loud that slaves were required to walk alongside to calm the frightened horses.

McCormick took out a patent in 1834, but his chief interest at that time was the family’s iron foundry. When the foundry failed in the wake of the bank panic of 1837, leaving the family deeply in debt, McCormick turned to his still-unexploited reaper and improved it. He sold 2 reapers in 1841, 7 in 1842, 29 in 1843, and 50 the following year.

An 1844 visit to the prairie states in the Midwest convinced McCormick that the future of his reaper and of the world’s wheat production lay in this vast fertile land rather than in the rocky, hilly East. In 1847, with further patented improvements, he opened a factory in the then small, swampy, lakeside town of Chicago in partnership with the mayor, William Ogden, who capitalized the venture with $50,000 of his own money. The first year, 800 machines were sold. More were sold the next year, and McCormick was able to buy out Ogden.

McCormick’s main rival was Obed Hussey, whose machine proved to be inferior as a reaper but superior as a mower. When McCormick’s basic patent expired in 1848, competing manufacturers—Hussey among them—tried to block renewal. The ensuing legal battle was but one of many in McCormick’s career. He was involved in endless litigation not only with rival manufacturers and infringers but also with the New York Central Railroad, which he sued for $20,000 damages following an altercation over an $8.75 overcharge on his wife’s baggage. He fought this particular case up to the Supreme Court three times—and won, even though it took 20 years. He did not win his 1848 patent renewal battle, however. Except for improvements on the reaper patented after 1831, the basic machine passed into the public domain. McCormick then set out to beat his manufacturing competitors another way: by outselling them.

Pockets stuffed with order blanks, McCormick rode over the plains selling his reaper to farmers and would-be farmers. To increase sales, he used innovations such as mass production, advertising, public demonstration, warranty of product, and extension of credit to his customers. Soon the factory expanded, and the company had a traveling sales force. By 1850 the McCormick reaper was known in every part of the United States, and at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London it was introduced to European farmers. Although mocked by The Times of London as “a cross between an Astley Chariot, a wheelbarrow, and a flying machine,” the reaper took the Grand Prize. In 1855 it won the Grand Medal of Honour at the Paris International Exposition. There followed a long series of prize honours and awards that made the McCormick reaper known to farmers throughout the world.

By 1856 McCormick was selling more than 4,000 machines a year. In the 1858 account of his marriage to Nancy (Nettie) Fowler, the Chicago Daily Press referred to him as the “massive Thor of industry.” Business did not absorb all of his energy, however. He became active in the Democratic Party and in the Presbyterian church, establishing the McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago.

In 1871 the Great Chicago Fire gutted his factory. Then—more than 60 years old, his fortune long since made—he rebuilt. When he died, his business was still growing. In 1902 the McCormick Harvesting Company joined with other companies to form International Harvester Company, with McCormick’s son, Cyrus, Jr., as its first president.